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LINCOLN : A TYPICAL AMERICAN 



AN ADDRESS BY 



THOMAS W. CRIDLER 



AT THE BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF 
BROOKLYN, FEBRUARY 12, 1901 



Gift 

HonH.C.Lodgft 
June 16 o« 







LINCOI^N: THE TYPICAL AMERICAN. 



I confess to no little trepidation in rising; to 
address this company on the ninety-second anni- 
versary of the birth of the lamented Abraham 
Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States. 
Certainly the theme is sufficiently inspiring, but 
when he was at the zenith of his fame — and he was 
that when he was murdered — I was a mere school- 
boy and naturally less interested in the political 
history of our country than I am to-day. 

I can not hope to say much that is interesting or 
anything that is new or that will materially enhance 
the name and fame of that great man. All this 
has been said years ago — said by abler men in their 
own novel and inimitable way. The official record 
proclaims it ; history records it. There is, there- 
fore, little concerning Lincoln that the world does 
not know and nothing that it does not justly admire. 
A few thoughts, however, suggest themselves ; and, 
if your patience will bear the strain, I will endeavor 
to give expression to them. 

It is not my province to even briefly review the 
life of Lincoln. That would be a useless task, 
quite out of keeping on such an occasion, since 



these details are well known to you as to all patri- 
otic Americans. Indeed, save Washington alone, 
the world at large (to which Lincoln belonged in 
its broadest sense) is more familiar with his life, his 
character, and his career than with those of any 
other American who ever lived. 

Lincoln was a product peculiarly indigenous to 
our soil ; yet a specimen most rare, for Nature, even 
in the abundance of her power, is far too stingy in 
presenting reproductions of the like of that remark- 
able man. Perhaps, in the fullness of her wisdom, 
she prefers to let him, like the solitary diamond, 
large and resplendent, shine with unique effulgence 
in the galaxy of Presidents as the beacon to which 
his countrymen can point, justly proclaiming him 
as the savior of our common country — the preserver 
of the glorious heritage Washington won for us. 
Lincoln was molded and fashioned by Nature 
out of her own plan. He was unlike any other. 
He seemed destined by the hand that created him 
for the time in which he lived and for the brief 
period wherein he largely held, and was responsible 
for, the destinies of our country. The world, too, 
is better because he lived in it ; he was a part of the 
mass of humanity by birth, by nature, by instinct. 
He belonged to that great majority — the "plain 
people" — from whom he sprang. He made their 
cause his cause; he knew their instincts; their char- 



acteristics ; he intuitiv^ely felt their pulse, their heart 
throbs. In the hour of his supremest s^lory and 
a^reatest triumphs he never ceased to kindly remem- 
ber them ; never tired of doing their biddincr; never 
forgot their wants. Their condition constantly ap- 
pealed to him. The im})ression left upon civiliza- 
tion everywhere by this great man, whose nobilit)' 
of character and wealth of goodness will live while 
language is spoken, is as precious, as fadeless, as 
bright, and as honorable as anything in the history 
or annals of any land or an\' time. It will always 
remain so. He had no superior; no e(]ual. 

Lincoln was a simple man, easy of access and a 
student of the people, whom he knew so well. In 
this res})ect his foresight seemed almost superhuman. 
He was courageous and heroic, fearing nothing ex- 
cept wrong. He was a man of immense energy; of 
great tenacity of pur})ose ; yet gentle, kind, and lov^- 
able. He was genuine; he was true. He had the 
ring of sincerity. He was an orator, profound and 
logical; he was gifted with the art of story -telling, 
although many of the anecdotes attributed to him 
may never have had the slightest authenticity; yet 
those he really narrated were told with a charming 
grace and a well-defined purpose, but never to in- 
ilict pain or injury, of both of which he was incap- 
able, if it could be avoided. He was resolute, yet 
merciful and forbearing. 



Lincoln was wholly without scholastic training; 
notwithstanding this, he was master of the art of 
composition, and his style was pure, terse, and force- 
ful. His second inaugural address stands without 
doubt as one of the greatest of his papers, but there 
are many others of wondrous beauty and grandeur. 
He was a student ever — a ceaseless gleaner after 
knowledge and truth. 

Lincoln was a man of many sides — noble, grand, 
lovable, ingenuous, yet shrewd ; a solitary in his 
genius, but companionable ; a lover of his fellow- 
men. His heart was one of tenderness; his sympa- 
thies easily touched; he never saw a fellow-creature 
suffer without feeling the pangs himself. It was 
his nature. He was suddenly raised to the highest 
place of power within the gift of his fellow-citizens, 
but he never swerved from his duty under the most 
trying circumstance, nor did he ever cease to be 
just, generous, and humane. He did not know how 
to be otherwise. How true and how beautiful are 
the words of Robert G. Ingersoll — a past master of 
poetic thought : 

Nothing discloses real character like the use of 
power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most 
people can bear adversity. But if you wish to 
know what a man really is, give him power. That 
is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, 
having almost absolute power, he never abused it, 
except upon the side of mercy. 



Usually, in considering the life of Lincoln, we 
dwell almost exclusively upon his wonderful services 
to the country in the purely domestic phases of the 
struggle for the Union. His figure stands out above 
all else in its relation to the course of events here 
at home during that trying and unhappy period. 
Wc naturally think of him as the guiding hand of 
the great forces which he marshaled and set in mo- 
tion and patiently reinforced and stimulated in the 
darkest hours. But it is not only as the calm, un- 
flinching pilot in the storm that swept over our land 
that he was great. As one whose attention has 
been given for many years to the foreign affairs of 
our Government, 1 have been impressed by a fea- 
ture of his career as President which is not so often 
made prominent in eulogies of him. The perils 
which he had to face in the military strength of the 
South, with political disaffection in his rear, are, of 
course, the most obvious and the most dramatic; 
but there were foes without, with wh(Hii, at times, 
it was even more difficult to deal. All the world 
knows now, what was more or less secret history at 
the time, that powerful intluences were at work in 
Europe to aid the seceding States, and that it was 
due to him that they were frustrated. I am far 
from wishing to detract from the consummate abil- 
ity of his Secretary of State, Seward, who, in my 
judgment, has never received the full measure of 



credit due him; but, invaluable as his assistance was 
to Lincoln, there can be no doubt that at some of 
the most critical stages of our diplomacy it was the 
President's sound judgment and tact that averted 
the storm or smoothed the angry waters for the 
ship of state. It was his master hand that guided 
the rudder and steered the course clear of the 
breakers, frequently threatening, dark, and gloomy. 

The skill with which Lincoln handled the foreign 
relations of the United States during this critical 
period, with the aid of Seward, is, in fact, one of 
the most remarkable illustrations of his genius, and 
it has a larger significance as showing the natural 
versatility of a typical American. Lincoln was, 
before all else, a specimen of that numerous class — 
a potent element of our national life — the self-made 
American. He was, as I have said, something 
more than a type ; he stands alone, confident in his 
own strength, firm and unyielding in the right. 
Born to command, for he possessed a perfect 
knowledge of himself and a capacity to understand 
and control those with whom he was surrounded, 
he plodded on, in his own way, to a successful 
end. Patience, firmness, and heroism — a constella- 
tion of strength which adorns great minds — were 
his distinguishing traits. 

But, as you are all aware, Lincoln had very few 
opportunities of education, of culture, and knew 



but little of the machinery, the proprieties, the 
etiquette of diplomatic intercourse. Nevertheless, 
when he was called upon to deal with delicate ques- 
tions of international comity, he proved himself 
fully equal to the emergency. He is perhaps the 
most conspicuous of all the examples in our history 
of the efificiency of common sense in even what 
may be termed the polite profession of diplomacy. 
It is too much the fashion to insist upon superficial 
accomplishments on the part of our statesmen, and 
especially of our representatives abroad in dealing 
with foreign nations. I would not, for one moment, 
belittle the importance of culture and refinement 
and special qualifications for officers of the Govern- 
ment who have delicate duties to discharge, or who 
are called upon to support the national dignity in 
foreign lands ; but these duties, after all — if I may 
be pardoned the expression — are but the millinery 
of official life. It seems to me to be far more im- 
portant that those who transact business for the 
Government, either at home or abroad, should pos- 
sess the }iractical (pialities, the shrewd insight into 
human character which is gained only by actual, 
everyday contact with men, the ready adaptability 
to new conditions which Lincoln showed in his alert 
and facile Americanism. These qualities were not 
peculiar to him, but are so common among our 
countrymen that it is the rule, rather than the 



8 

exception, that men who have risen to such influence 
among us that they are chosen for important posts 
exhibit a capacity which is often, no doubt, surpris- 
ing to themselves. It certainly excites the astonish- 
ment of foreigners; and the very novelty of our 
methods in diplomacy, the directness and prompti- 
tude with which we go to the root of matters, often 
give us a distinct advantage. If we look back 
upon the diplomatic history of the United States, 
I think it will be found that we have made but few 
serious errors and none that were capital. 

We have now entered upon a wholly new relation 
to the rest of the world. The old days of isolation 
ended even before the Spanish war demonstrated to 
the world the fact that we were capable of taking a 
place among the great powers; they had ended be- 
cause we had begun to invade the markets of the 
w^orld with our goods — surely a peaceable and laud- 
able undertaking. At first, we hardly looked upon 
it as a serious business. It originated in the need of 
our manufacturers to get rid of their surplus prod- 
uct. The industrial system of the United States 
had developed to the point where its productive 
capacity largely exceeded the demands of the home 
market. Instinctively, we sought new markets 
abroad. The movement has gone on with results 
that have surprised ourselves and amazed the world. 
It might be supposed that to claim preeminence 



among the nations competing in commerce was a 
mere exaggeration, or, at best, a wish that was 
father to the thought, if it were l)ased upon our 
own estimate of our achievements; hut the general 
testimony of the very nations who are feeling our 
competition most keenly concedes to us a i)osition 
of eminence in the world's markets which, to quote 
from a recent letter of the Secretary of State — 

Ma}^ result in shifting tlie center, not only of 
industrial, but of commercial, activity and the 
money power of the world to our marts. 

I cite this great fact, the most surprising, per- 
haps, in the economic history of the world in recent 
days, because it brings to a focus, as it were, the 
qualities (which 1 believe to be peculiar to Ameri- 
cans) that made Lincoln at once so great a man and 
so genuine a representative of the great mass of his 
countrymen. iVnd pursuing the subject further, 
we find strong confirmation of my theory in two 
widely dissimilar forms of activity — I refer to pri- 
vate enterprise and official service. Usually, as was 
remarked recently by the Secretary of the Navy, 
official service follows in the wake of private enter- 
prise; but in the commercial expansion of the 
United States we find that the two have gone 
together hand in hand, and that official service, 
far from treading tamely in the rear, has in many 



lO 

instances blazed the way for our industries and trade. 
Upon the one hand, American manufacturers have 
shown surprising capacity to adapt themselves to 
the requirements of foreign markets and actually 
to undersell the most advanced industries of Europe 
in their own homes. A striking illustration of this 
is found in the fact that we are selling cutlery 
in Sheffield; tin plate in Wales; hoots, shoes, 
and hosiery in Leicester ; and the shipment of 
American coal to England may actually be said 
to be "carrying coals to Newcastle." Upon 
the other hand, I do not hesitate to assert that 
the success of our exporters in thus invading 
markets that might have been considered hermet- 
ically sealed has been largely due to the activity 
of our consular officers and the rapidity with 
which their reports are printed and distributed. 
You have all, doubtless, heard a good deal about 
the defects of our consular system. That there is 
room for improvement, none can deny ; but the 
consular officers, drawn from the great body of 
the people, have shown themselves to be so intelli- 
gent in comprehending the needs of American trade 
and so zealous in promoting it that our service, 
defective though it may be, has excited the admi- 
ration and the envy of great trading nations like 
England and German\', whose consular corps for 
years have been held up to us as models for our 



1 1 

own. All this serves, to mv mind, to emphasize 
the praetical superiority of the national type which 
we have unconsciously evolved, and to cast an even 
stronger and more vivid light upon the national 
characteristics of which Lincoln was so great an 
e.\j)oncnt. .\side from his individual (jualities of 
mind, of heart, of character, he stands to-day, as he 
was in life, in the fullest sense a heroic figure of 
Americanism — the Americanism which we now see 
rapidly spreading itself over the face of the earth, 
to the envv of the world. 

I make no pretense at ])r()j)hecv; the plain, prac- 
tical things of life appeal to me, little of the senti- 
mental and none of the theoretical. Vet I venture 
this conjecture : that if, in Ood's providence, Lincoln 
were aliv^e, he would unquestionably be on the side 
of the greater L'^nited States — not greater strictlv in 
the sense of its material wealth and j)hvsical power, 
but in the higher and nobler sense of its wide and 
widening inlluence as a controlling power among the 
nations and peoples of the earth, of which, I think, 
we are the greatest to-day. And I confidently believe 
that Lincoln's commanding influence would be on 
the side of the great majority in the movement 
for the advancement of the power and the glory of 
our country at home and abroad, since he is every- 
where recognized, with universal accord, as "one of 
the greatest Americans and best of men." 



12 

In closing, since Lincoln blossomed and broad- 
ened under the trying days of 1861-65, what more 
beautiful sentiment can I employ than to quote the 
poetic Ingersoll again? 

Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest 
civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world. 



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